Post by Eva on Jun 19, 2015 2:23:09 GMT
Intro: What Is Gap?
Gap is my own personal setting, and is where Lioncourt hails from. It is a vaguely fantasy-horror mishmash, with generally earthlike geography (the continents are recognizable) but not earthlike culture. The Celts in this world spoke Japanese. Also, Plato was a werewolf.
Section 1: Metacausality
Gap is themed around the concept of incompleteness. Nothing in Gap can be considered truly 'finished' or 'whole.' The earth, moon, and universe as a whole have pieces missing from them. Unlike the World of Darkness, Gap does not want things to be worse: it merely wants them to be unresolved. As such, Gap will never become a true hell, but it will equally resist becoming a heaven. It will not crush your plans, but it will prevent them from working the way you wanted them to. You can approach perfection asymptotically, but Gap will prevent you from ever achieving it.
Everyone in Gap settles for 'good enough', and usually, it is.
Section 2: Geography
Gap is an Earth with a Sun and a Moon. It's mirror-reversed such that east is west, the planet spins the other direction, etc, but otherwise the geography is unchanged.
(There is a single exception that proves the rule.)
Section 3: Cultural Geography: General Overview
(Real-life geography / inhabiting Gap culture)
Europe/Hastum:
The modern-day continent of Hastum was once ruled by the werewolf legions of Old Lupinia: those days are long gone now. The mainland is held by Mori, a revolutionary empire born from the collapse of the last holdout of the Lupinian nobility in Hastae. Offshore, the empire of Grand Victoria stands as strong as ever, its never-conquered Imperial court commanding the sky with vast airships. Though there are no battles between the two, relations can hardly be said to be friendly: the continent is in a state of cold war as both sides build their weapons stockpiles ever higher.
Africa/Lupinia:
Old Lupinia was grand enough that it got a continent named after it. Its heir-empires still live on along the southern and western coasts, and further to the west, where it borders Oceania: 'barbarians' live in the remaining two-thirds, in various clans, tribes, and pocket kingdoms too numerous to properly describe. The gathered clans in the east come together each full moon for ritual and social purposes: see the Magic post or the more in-depth Lupinia post for details.
Asia/Oceania:
Oceania... Is exceedingly strange.
There used to be empires and kingdoms here. Now, Oceania rules itself... By which I mean the land governs. After Dracula ate the Gap!Dutch (see History for more details), the entire region became 'alive': each ocean, deer, and blade of grass is occupied by its own spirit. Some human practioners of the spiritual arts remain, but on the whole, Oceania is no longer a place for human nations.
The New World/Ulvenwald:
Ulvenwald, as the Hastaean powers see it, is a vast, trackless forest of a continent, where people go in and never come out. It is inhabited by creatures from nightmares, barbarian tribes, and the shattered remains of a Grand Victorian scientific colony, fallen far from its ideals of democracy and enlightenment to become a dystopia of mad engineering and unethical biology. This last remaining city-state, Eyesocket, is one of the worst places to live in Gap.
Shadescast:
Shadescast doesn't properly exist, geographically: it is a pocket dimension, with many doors in many places, each contained within its own travelling castle. It is a vampire nation, and a nation of vampires. A vast cavern in non-space, it is eternally twilight, lit only by firepits and guttering torches. Humans are less than cattle, here: the vampire nobility is prone to murderous excess and private wars. It is, in short, the absolutely worst place to live in Gap.
(Continued at some point with more in depth sections, history, tech, magic)